Business

Sachin Bansal Quits Flipkart, Says He Will "Brush Up Coding Skills"

Highlights

Sachin Bansal cofounded Flipkart in 2007

He owned 5% stake in the company: Report

Mr Bansal said he will focus on finishing a few personal projects

Sachin Bansal, the group chairman of Flipkart, has announced his exit from the e-commerce company he co-founded in 2007. His exit comes in the wake of US retail giant Walmart announcing a deal to acquire Flipkart. "Sadly my work here is done and after 10 years, it's time to hand over the baton and move on from Flipkart. But I'll be watching and cheering from the outside - Flipsters, you better continue to do a good job!" Mr Bansal said in a Facebook post.

On his future plans, Mr Bansal said: "I'll be taking some long time off and focus on finishing a few personal projects which I haven't been able to find time for. Will catch up on gaming (and see what kids are playing these days) and brush up on my coding skills."

Before the deal, Sachin Bansal and the other co-founder Binny Bansal each owned about 5 per cent in the e-commerce company, and the Walmart deal should give each a fortune of about $1 billion, news agency Bloomberg had reported earlier.

India's biggest e-commerce marketplace was founded in 2007 in Bengaluru by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both former employees of Amazon. The Bansals met in 2005 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-Delhi).

Flipkart at first sold books, and later expanding to sell music, movies, games, electronics and mobiles, the category that has driven growth. The first book it sold was John Wood's 'Leaving Microsoft to Change the World'. It launched logistics arm Ekart in 2010 and started the now popular cash-on-delivery service.

On his Flipkart journey, Sachin Bansal said: "Flipkart truly upheld audacity and customer centricity and I got to work with the best people. We took on some of the biggest challenges and solved many complex problems for India."

In 2016, Binny Bansal took over as CEO and Sachin Bansal became executive chairman. Last year, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, previously an executive in Flipkart investor Tiger Global, took over as Flipkart CEO. Binny Bansal became CEO of the whole group, which includes fashion portals Myntra-Jabong, payments unit PhonePe and logistics firm Ekart.

Walmart announced on Wednesday that it was paying $16 billion for a roughly 77 per cent stake in the Indian online marketplace - the US retailer's biggest deal ever.

The remainder of the business will be held by some of Flipkart's existing shareholders, including Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, China's Tencent Holdings Ltd, Tiger Global Management LLC and Microsoft Corp.

Under the Walmart deal, Sachin Bansal and another shareholder Japan's Softbank Corp Group are exiting from the e-commerce company, news agency Press Trust of India had reported earlier.

Walmart also that the deal included $2 billion of funding from new equity in Flipkart, which could be sold to additional investors in the future, diluting the US company's overall stake.